Latest in Ubisoft

EXCLUSIVE: In competitive bidding, Screen Gems has acquired motion picture rights to Just Dance, the wildly popular Ubisoft video game. Screen Gems will develop a film based on a franchise that is the bestselling music video game of all time, with 120 million players worldwide in all age ranges. Multiple studios…

“Have you ever dreamed of exploring someone else’s consciousness, exploring their deep dark thoughts?”
Such were Elijah Wood’s pitch today at Ubisoft’s E3 presentation at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown L.A., where he revealed an extended look at the VR game Transferencehe’s been in production on over the last few…

Video game publisher Ubisoft and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s creative collaborative platform HitRECord are partnering up and inviting the latter’s online community of artists to create assets for future video games, starting with Ubisoft’s multiplayer RPG title Beyond Good and Evil 2.
Gordon-Levitt appeared onstage today…

Don Winslow and Shane Salerno, who co-wrote the script for Oliver Stone’s Savages based on Winslow’s novel and are co-writing again for Winslow’s The Cartel — are back together again. The pair has teamed to create the cartel-themed narrative for Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands, the latest video game in Ubisoft…

SAG-AFTRA has gone on strike against the video game industry. Just after midnight PT, the union ordered its members to stop working on games until the strike is over. Shortly before the clock struck midnight, a spokesman for the companies said no date has been set for the resumption of talks.
It's the first-ever…

EXCLUSIVE: Didier Lupfer might just have been the busiest man in Cannes. The well-respected Lupfer is chairman and chief exec of Studio Canal, by some measure Europe’s biggest film company with distribution in the UK, France, Germany, Benelux (as well as Australia and New Zealand) and a thriving multi-lingual…

Like a thief in the night comes the first trailer for Assassin’s Creed, the start of what could end up being a film franchise based on Ubisoft’s long-running hit series of video games. Like the games on which it’s based, the film follows a man who through the use of futuristic technology is able to experience the…

EXCLUSIVE: When Vivendi finally closes its deal with Mediaset, described by insiders as an “industrial alliance,” in what should be the next few days, the result will be a media giant right in the heart of Europe. The deal as currently envisaged will see the companies swap a 3.5% stake in the other, each get a member…

French media giant Vivendi has upped its offer for vidgame company Gameloft after its initial bid was rejected by the board. Vivendi released a statement saying it had increased its offer to 7.20 Euros per share from the previous offer of 6 Euros per share. That would value the company at around 610 million Euros, or…

Four winners of the second annual Horizon Award were announced today ahead of the kickoff of the Sundance Film Festival. The award seeks to identify and mentor talented, up-and-coming female directors early in their development. Cassian Elwes, Lynette Howell Taylor and Christine Vachon are co-founders, and the winners…

French media titan Vivendi has increased its stake in Ubisoft and Gameloft for the second time in recent weeks and indicated it may acquire even more of the French video game companies. Vivendi now owns 10.39% of Ubisoft (11.6 million shares) and 10.2% of Gameloft (8.68 million shares). Both companies, though based in…

EXCLUSIVE: Former Gulfstream Pictures exec Matt Phelps has moved on to Ubisoft Motion Pictures as the studio’s new VP Development. He is heading up the opening of the company’s Los Angeles offices as selected staff relocate to Southern California from Paris.
While at Warner Bros-based Gulfstream, Phelps worked on the…